Julia Nguyen

Biography

Julia Nguyen is a web and mobile developer, writer, speaker, and computer science student. Born and raised in Toronto, she writes, speaks, and organizes communities focused on embracing empathy, diversity, inclusion, and mental health.

Julia organizes mentorship events and workshops at the University of Waterloo Women in Computer Science Undergraduate Committee (WiCS). She also volunteers with Write/Speak/Code, an organization empowering female thought leaders in technical writing, conference speaking, and open source.

As a co-op student, Julia has worked for companies and organizations of all sizes in consulting, open source, and e-commerce. She also leads an open source project called if me, a community for people to share their mental health experiences with loved ones and trusted peers.

Sessions for this user

Julia Nguyen leads if me, an app to share mental health experiences with loved ones. In doing so, she has explored her insecurities with mental illness, learned how to engage diverse contributors, and developed better software practices with Ruby on Rails and JavaScript. She’ll share the lessons she has learned from transforming a passion project into an open source project.
Inclusion takes on many forms in an open source project, including supporting contributors from all types of backgrounds, being empathetic to their project goals, and trusting them to take lead. As a mental health project, if me must also accommodate its contributors who face their own mental health challenges. All open source projects should do the same. Managing people is just as important as managing technical contributions in software.